Iron Jack

Its been a busy month in the Ironjack household, with lots of news and more than a few changes. More on all of that later. In the meantime, as I was preparing to go for a ride this morning, it struck me that I’ve had a load of good advice lately, which has made a huge difference to every element of my training.

So, things I’ve learnt lately:

• Boydglide is the absolutely, only, bloody brilliant chafing cream around - GET SOME TODAY!
• If you have a wee sore on your bottom that’s not going away and hurts a lot when you ride - go to the Doctor and get some antibiotics and it will be gone in less than a week!
• The second part to this lesson is to make sure you have the best Dr in town who “gets” what you’re on about and who will actually loan you her beautiful Specialized bike so that you can do Ironman, thanks Dr Alice - again!
• If you can have a free and frank conversation with your friendly bike shop about the state of your bottom - you will end up buying bike shorts that actually fit and fit you well and all of a sudden you can ride for a whole hour longer on the bike before you get sore - Cyclezone, you still rock! Thank you!
• Nutrition is absolutely key - all of a sudden I have energy to train and am having quality training sessions that I actually enjoy and I’m recovering better as well - thanks Rachel!
• If something’s not right, and it’s really not right, change - don’t be afraid to make that really big decision - Kathy, welcome to the Ironjack team!
• If something’s broken, get the professional help you need - within just a few weeks I’m back running again after hurting my foot/ankle thanks to my physio, Corey

And finally for today, you cannot underestimate the value of your different support crews - in this case:

• my family/old friends support network (especially Mike and the boys, thank you!)
• our new friends support crew (and I’m not going to name everyone because I’ll miss someone out but you know who you are!)
• the triathlon club support crew
• my online support crew - including Ironman Stu, Donna_de, Toni_Knowles and many more, this is just a few of the people who keep in touch and keep me going

So thanks everyone for the support and advice. Things are going well and I’m feeling very positive right now. I fully expect that to change with the ups and downs that is training for Ironman, but I’m definitely in the right space.

Kia kaha.